November 5, 2012

"Take a look at that. Then share it with your friends so they can see how many people with their names have voted, too -- and look up their polling place. Bottom line: We need every Ann -- and everyone else, too -- to make it out to the polls to support President Obama."

Another email trying to leverage social media. This one provides a link to the Obama campaign website with the supposedly enticing teaser "How many people with your name have voted already?" To get the answer, you have to click on a button that takes you to a page where you're supposed to log into Facebook, and the fine print says:

So if you fell for the fun idea of seeing your damned name connected to a number and impulsively logged into Facebook, you just gave the campaign all that personal information and you agreed to... who knows what?

Active Collection: Personal information may be collected in a number of ways when you visit our Sites. We collect certain information you voluntarily provide to us, such as when you create an account or a profile, make a donation, make a purchase, send us an email or sign up to receive email or text message updates, fill out a form, connect through a social feed, sign up to be a volunteer or host an event, request information, apply for an internship, or use a voter registration form tool. Such information may include personal information, such as your name, mailing address, email address, phone number, geographic location, and credit card information. We may also collect demographic information you may voluntarily provide from time to time, such as in response to questionnaires and surveys, including gender, ethnicity, education, and interest information. If this information is tied to personally identifiable information, it will be treated as personal information. Personal and demographic information may also be collected if you provide such information in connection with creating a profile or group, leaving comments, posting blog comments or other content, sending an email or message to another user, or participating in any interactive forums or features on the Sites. In addition, from time to time we may collect demographic, contact or other personal information you provide in connection with your participation in surveys, contests, games, promotions, and other activities on the Sites. We may also obtain information from other sources and combine that with information we collect on our Sites.

Does that boldface say they are mining the text of email and messages sent on Facebook for personal information?

Of course, the real point of all this data gathering is so that Obama's ground game specialists will know what names to use when they vote the last few dozen times each towards the end of the polling day.

I realize this is off-topic, but I read the following in the Rasmussen daily tracking poll:

If the white turnout increases on Election Day, it will be very difficult for the president to win. If it decreases, it will be very difficult for him to lose. Rasmussen Reports currently estimates that white turnout will be similar to the 2008 totals. Black voters, however, are far more likely to have voted already than any other segment of the electorate.

I wonder if this were rewritten to say if Blacks and Hispanics vote more than white voters, if it would be racist?

FB is evil. I barely overcame my revulsion to make an account there using my real name. Everything I can find to lock down on it is locked. I post nothing and give them no information apart from my name, which I revealed only so that relatives will friend me, allowing me to keep up with family news and remove my tag from any photos they post. What fools people are to salt that miserable data mine in the first place.

Keep on your toes Eustace. Facebook resets your security settings periodically. Any time there is an update to Facebook's software, you need to go check because the default is always "everybody sees it."

I don't have a FB account; despite the numerous requests for "friend"ship from my immediate family. I browsed through using my mom's account -- with her permission of course-- and was not impressed. It didn't seem to be worth the cost of giving them access to my privacy.

I'm glad I didn't cave. Having to endure the daily barrage of idiotic political propaganda that certain family members love to "like" would've driven me nuts (my mother shows them to me on occasion.) I don't want to be reminded daily that people I love have become groupthink zombies.

Plus FB is evil. For ex.- At my mom's request I loaded up some family photos into her account, and set them to be viewable only to family. Well a month later they came out with a new photo rating app, that decided it would make all my mom's photos viewable to the whole world for rating.

Now there was nothing embarrassing to my family about those photos, but there could have been, so it pissed me off that they did that. And from what I've read they do that sort of thing a lot- change privacy settings and you have to go and change them back.

I read somewhere that the FB creator doesn't like the idea of anonymity. He thinks an open society is a polite society. Screw him. Does he also believe in sleeping with his door unlocked at night?

Edutcher: lol--I can see axlerod saying "damn--it worked four years ago--whats going on now."

As a social networking luddite I dont do face book, dont have a TV and dont do twitter (whatever the hell that is). I have a cheap cell phone that I can text and talk on. I dont have a land line. I rather like being a luddite, especially as it comes to "social networking."

You dudes want to social network? My guess is that it comes with a cost--unless, of course, you dont value your privacy.

I am neither a full on FB user nor am I paranoid about the privacy issues. I know FB will mine every bit of marketable data they can from everything about me on FB. I am generally apolitical and otherwise post things that are quirky or obscure. When you start "liking" things or set out to have 100s of friends, you will be noticed by the computers.

One of the first things the Obama Whitehouse got caught doing was stealing email addresses when you visited a .gov website. No, not placing cookies--stealing email addresses like the websites run by bad guys do. At least this time they are asking first.

Democrats in several States are sending letters to your neighbors telling them you voted Republican and then telling them how that impacted them negatively. The fascist in every Leftie is just straining to get out.

I don't mind, say, Amazon or Arkiv Music or other online retailers I do business with keeping my credit card info on file. Political campaigns are another matter, especially ones that have a well-documented history of playing fast and loose with cc security.